Sunday, January 24, 2010

Who is Ellie Light?

Yesterday a trend began to emerge. Status updates on facebook started to appear asking the question "Who is Ellie Light?"

These cryptic updates caused predictable curiosity and subsequent searching --driving trends on Google and Yahoo to help expose Ellie Light for what would have gone unnoticed in pre-internet vigilance times...

Explanation from Newsbusters:

"In January, an anonymous person supposedly named "Ellie Light" launched a massive PR campaign on behalf of President Barack Obama.

The goal appears to have been to infiltrate as many newspapers as possible to spread pro-Obama propaganda -- as if the press needed the help.

Light's plan was simple enough: write a compelling letter to the editor, pretend to be a concerned reader in the region, and persuade the paper to print her liberal blather.

For three weeks, editors of mainstream newspapers big and small allowed Light to spread Democrat talking points under the guise of small-town grassroots without anyone bothering to double check her story. Read the whole story

Anyone with a facebook page- write "Who is Ellie Light?" as your status update...then sit back and smile contently as all your friends Google it and unwittingly help spread the word :)